History
is made by people who seize the moments that circumstances offer and bend
them to their purposes. When the conditions are adverse, they nurse their
purposes, their dreams of freedom, dignity and power, so that when their
moment arrives, they are ready to seize it, even at the cost of their lives.

On April 19, 1775, 700
British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American
colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British
ordered them to disperse, the colonists fired back at the British soldiers.
This “shot heard ‘round the world” heralded the start of an insurrection
against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time. And when it ended,
victorious, in 1783, the colonists had gained their objective. They had
established a sovereign but slave-holding republic, the United States of
America.

The colonists broke
away because this was economically advantageous to their commercial and
landed classes. As colonists, they were ruled by a parliament in which they
were not represented, and which did not represent their interests. The
colonies were not free to protect and develop their own commerce and
industries. Their bid for independence was made all the more attractive
because it was pressed under the banner of liberty. The colonial elites had
imbibed well the lessons of the Enlightenment, and here in the new world,
they had an opportunity to harness liberty in the service of their economic
interests. Backed by the self interest of their landed and commercial
elites, and inspired by revolutionary ideas, the colonists had a dream worth
pursuing. They were prepared to die for this dream – and to kill. They did:
and they won.

On September 11, 2001,
nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die – and to
kill – for what they believed was their dream. They died – so they thought –
because they wanted their people to live, free and in dignity. The manner of
their death – and the destruction it wreaked – is not merely a testament to
the vulnerabilities that modern technology has created to clandestine
attacks. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed peacefully for
many decades. The attacks of 9-11 were in many ways a work of daring and
imagination too; if one can think objectively of such horrors. They
were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the
Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by
surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed.
The explosion of 9-11 was indeed a “shot heard 'round the world.”

The parallels between the American war of independence and the global
Islamic insurgency are not exact. The colonists did not deliberately target
civilians; the nineteen hijackers did. Nevertheless, this difference should
not obscure the more basic fact -- when viewed from the perspective of the
protagonists in each case -- that there exists a similarity of aims. Both
insurgencies seek to overthrow what they perceive to be foreign occupations.
If we choose to ignore this, as most Americans have done, we may fail to
arrive at a correct response to this insurgency.

Most Americans heard
the shot clearly – what they heard was deafeningly clear to them.
They had heard this message before: that Islam is a problem; that Muslims
are terrorists; that they have failed to modernize; that they hate America
for what it is, for its freedom, its progress and promise of democracy. They
declared that 9-11 had changed their world forever. They demanded
vengeance for the world they had lost, a secure world, a haven, eternally
protected from the other world they should be forever free to ravage. And
they are still not satisfied – with more than 100,000 Iraqis and tens of
thousands of Afghans dead.

How did the Muslims
hear this shot that reverberated around the world? Did they hear the
accusations carried by this shot, a hundred accusations pointing to the
dereliction of Muslims: their dereliction in defending their homeland;
their failure to live honorable lives, as sons and daughters of Adam who
named the names, as free agents, accountable now and forever for their
choices, their actions, their lives? Have they strained their bodies, hearts
and minds to carry out the trust that their Creator first offered to the
mountains – which the mountains sensibly refused? Have they heard the cry
of the strangers – the men, women and children in the oppressed city –
crying for the Muslims to redeem them? Have they heard the cry of the female
child buried alive? Have they fed the indigent? Have they freed their
slaves? Have they taken care of the orphans placed in their care? Have they
opposed the bondage, the pulverization of human lives, produced by a system
that places capital and profits before human needs?

Above all, the
question that the hijackers of 9-11 pose to their Islamic compatriots is
this: “What have you risked to oppose your own tyrants, your own ruling
cliques, tribes and sectaries, who are so easily co-opted by foreign powers,
who have worked so treacherously to enslave their own peoples, who sell off
their national treasures, and who have secretly worked with Israel to
complete the dismantling of Palestinian society?”

“We engage in this
violence against the United States,” they say, “because you force us to,
because you have failed to act against the American surrogates in your own
countries. Because you have failed to act politically and with courage, we
send you this message of horror, of shame. We advertise your shame before
the world. We announce the failure of a billion and a half people – keepers
of the Qur’aan and heirs to a moral civilization – to overthrow the craven
ruling classes who commit treachery against their own societies, their own
history, every day that they cling to power.”

“Mobilize now,” they
repeat, “and we will join again your political struggle at home – in the
Islamic lands stretching from Mauritania to Mindanao, from Bosnia to Borneo,
from Jerusalem to Jakarta, from Tangier to Tanzania, and from Karachi to
Kasghar. If you are willing to struggle, to fight, to secure your own homes,
your own societies, your enemies cannot bind you through surrogates. America
and Israel will have to fight you in your lands. Is America ready to fight a
billion and a half people in their own streets, their own squares, their own
backyards?”

“God,” the hijackers
taunt, “does not change the condition of a people unless they want to change
it themselves.” At this juncture, if the Muslims don’t change their
conditions, the Americans and Israelis have set in motion the machinery that
will rearrange their world.

One thing is certain
now: the Islamic world will change. Will it be the change the Americans and
Israelis want? Will the Islamic world be smashed into a collection of
micro-states – ethnic, sectarian and tribal entities – allied to and
dependent on the US and Israel for their survival? Or will the Muslims
oppose this new ‘civilizing mission’ and regain the freedom to shape their
destiny in ways that allow the integral Qur’anic society, just, inclusive,
creative, seeking knowledge, taking the middle road, to once again enrich
our common human sojourn on earth?